This essay presents a chronology of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s lifelong battle for justice for the Indigenous peoples. After his first conversion in 1514, he offered three reform projects; after a second conversion in 1522, he entered the Dominicans, studied philosophy and theology, as well as honed his canon law expertise. In the 1520s, he produced the Del único modo – a missiological treatise promoting peaceful and persuasive evangelization, condemning wars of conquest, and demanding restitution for the evils and harms done. In the 1530s, his writings contributed to significant papal documents.

In the 1540s, he “made” the Leyes Nuevas to prohibit enslavements; he wrote his most well-known Brevísima to denounce the conquest and, as bishop of Chiapa diocese, he developed theConfesionario to enforce the Leyes Nuevas and to compel restitution. In the 1550s, after completing the Apologética historia sumaria and the Apología, he published and distributed a series of eight treatises that contained the best of his juridical-philosophic-theological thought. In the 1560s, Las Casas continued to defend Indigenous rights at court in Spain, and published the final trilogy of his most forceful and prescient works – writings that numbered more than 300 at the time of his death.